No more tripping

It always amazes me how you can be looking for something and have to search far and wide, but then stumble on the solution without so much as the tiniest bit of effort.
It so happens that next to our postage stamp sized driveway, there is this crazy post, the purpose of which is to keep one half of the garage doors from swinging open too far. Unfortunately the little hook doesn't quite line up with it's counterpart on the bottom of the door, but judging by other constuction issues I've found so far, this doesn't surprise me.
Trouble is, at night this sucker can be a nasty surprise. It doesn't move out of the way at all, and the lighting at that particular spot is not the best, since the car tends to block any help from the street lighting coming from just a few feet away.


Yes, that's a hook.


On my way back from setting up an appointment to get our winter tires switched, I figured I'd stop into Dink's and there, in their junk bin was my answer.

Couldn't beat the price of €4.00.
I'm sure the garden centres have the same critters, but I neither need an entire set, nor do I choose to pony up too much dough.


There we have it. Now if the sun would only come out, we might get to see if this thing will actually do the trick.

Why do Mondays suck?

Not sure why it is, but I was never overly keen on Mondays when I was working, and they still suck. What gives?
Managed to get around this morning to the Groenteman (fruit and veggie guy) and then over to the Dr's office to make yet another appointment for a little chat. Since I became immediately aware of just how dead as a fart Delden is on a Monday morning, I decided to go back out to do a little messing about with the video making apparatus, and instead only managed to get caught in the rain. Had an umbrella with me, but it was raining just hard enough that I would have only done bad things to the camera.
Had a nice chat with one of the neighbours. (she's the one whose dog cr*ps on my lawn, but we'll just keep that to ourselves)
Come to find out her husband is a retired surgeon, (boy are we in the wrong neighbourhood) and has been retired for about three years. He just turned 65 recently, and is still a pretty active guy. She was telling me about their recent skiing trip to Switzerland that didn't go all that well. There had not only been several avalanche warnings but a whack of fog. Neither situation works for skiing I'm afraid. We did compare notes on Swiss xenophobia.

One of the things that becomes glaringly obvious when the sun comes out after a long absence as it did yesterday is that you start to notice just how dirty the windows are.
To keep the heat in (this is a joke btw) some genius thought it would be a good idea to attach a thermopane on the window of the door that leads from our bedroom out to a little rickety balcony. This "balcony" will be the subject of another entry I'm thinking, since it deserves some special consideration.

I mostly wanted to take this thing down to clean it, and get rid of the condensation between it and the original glass.

So I'm working away, popping out screws and thinking, "hm, the number of times I've had to install or remove things by myself...." when it occured to me that, in keeping with the title of the blog, this might in fact be a reflection of an event that could very well have taken place in my former life.

So I went to get the camera.


There was no way to properly get a picture of it, so I didn't really even try, but there's air coming in all around the door. That perfectly good thermopane isn't doing a danged thing.

You're welcome to put whatever word in my mouth that you think should be appropriate.

So I dutifully put it back on after having cleaned it. Probably have to do the same next year.
I think at this point I was wondering to myself if these people had ever experienced an actual cold winter.


Turns out, until I buy some weather stipping for around the door, this:

will be the best way to keep the heat in the bedroom.

More Cycle Trips

Yesterday was a good day for two reasons. It was Saturday and.....it was sunny!.
This latter fact was not something that went unnoticed by my significant other who at one point asked, "what.... are you giddy 'cause the sun is out or something?". I tried to control myself after that, since I didn't realise it was quite that obvious.
After the usual couple trips to various shops in the morning, it was a very easy decision to then take the bikes and simply head out.
I should mention though that we did stop into the local bike shop where I bought new and shiny and briefly perused some of the bikes on offer. We may end up having to once again pony up what any sane individual would consider to be a hefty sum for something decent, but we're slowly coming to the realisation that it's a worth while investment. Something in this price range. Try not to be horrified. The sales dude took a look out the window at the bike that Gabe is presently riding and only commented that it was, "rather sporty". What he meant by that was, "it has way too many gears for you". We did have a brief look at the used bikes, but they looked kind of ratty. I'm thinking folks must just ride their bikes into the ground, so maybe there's not a lot of trading up going on.
Now, there is (well, was) a picture that I took of Gabe in front of the company that cannot be named, showing that she could in fact make it to work by bike. However, I did not realise that the job of photographer also meant having to be responsible for hair and make-up. I thought I had stepped back the obligatory 50 paces, but apparently not.
So much for having a better camera that picks up every little thing. You'll just have to use your imagination.
The scoop is, it's slightly over seven kilometers and there are no marauding gangs of wild geese.
That's in a slightly different direction.

Oh, and if need be, one can always stop at the golden arches for a McP*ss.

So in order to appease you in the picture department, we went out again today and took a totally new route on the other side of the canal. Really rural, with narrow roads and some deep ditches.


You can make up your own story line.
Oh, and a good section of the road was "pavement", which consisted of what looked like bricks in a herring bone arrangement (kind of hard on the posterior) and the road for the return trip was rather soft. There was a brief section of asphalt in between, thankfully.
We'll not go back over there until that one section of road is completely dry, since the soft bit made for a few kilometers of hard sloggin'.

Plus, "new and shiney" got a little splattered.

Can't have that.

For your further amusement, I've taken a couple night shots from one of the rooms upstairs. I'll figure it out completely at some point. But this stuff is kind of fun..


You can't actually see the car going by, just the streak of light from the headlamps.